“Do you remember the tale I told that day of our picnic on Captain’s Hill? I told of how Captain Briggs came to be crafted.”
“Yes, of course.” Lorena remembered the tale well for its curious nature, but it was Drew whom Brogan addressed.
“Sailmaker Thomas Pinney, being crafty with a needle, was asked to sew a doll in the likeness of a privateer captain. This is the doll he made,” he explained again. “Captain Briggs. The doll your papa gave you. Do you . . . remember?”
Drew’s eyes rounded at the mention of his papa. “When I was still a babe,” he said in a soft voice, “I had a papa.”
Satisfied, Brogan smiled and included Lorena with his gaze before continuing. “When I learned I was to be promoted to captain, I commissioned Thomas to stitch me a military coat. Thomas’s father had been a tailor, you see, and he trained his son well in his profession. But when the old man died, Thomas decided he would rather go to sea and fight for his country than pursue a clothier’s trade. So he signed on as a sailmaker for the Wild Pilgrim.” Brogan opened his arms. “And this is the coat Thomas made.”
As he paused, Lorena caught a shimmer in his eyes. She didn’t understand. What was he implying?
“When I saw the fine job Thomas had made of my coat,” he continued, “I commissioned him to make a doll in my likeness as a gift to my young son, so he’d not forget me while I was away on the Black Eagle. I told my son that whenever he felt lonely, he was to hold Captain Briggs and remember how much his papa loved him, and to know that nothing would stop his papa from coming back for him.”
Brogan stared intently at Drew, tears in his eyes, while Drew gaped back in fascination.
“My son’s name was Benjamin,” he said.
Lorena gasped as realization struck.
“My papa died at sea,” Drew said.
“Lorena and your papa Huntley surely believed I had died, for I sailed into battle. It was a dangerous war and many men did die. But not I. I’ve been searching for you these three years we’ve been apart. The reason I’ve waited until now to tell you who I am was because I wanted to let you get to know me first.”
Lorena didn’t know why she didn’t say anything, other than the fact she was dumbfounded . . . and as entranced by the story as was Drew. She didn’t know what she’d been expecting Brogan to reveal, but never this.
“I love you, Ben,” Brogan told the boy. “I made you a promise that no matter how long or whatever it took, I would return. I left you Captain Briggs as a symbol of that promise, and when I saw that you carried him still”—Brogan touched a finger to the child’s heart—“I knew some small part of you had to remember. Else why would you still cling to this doll after all these years and after you were told I was gone?”
A grin spread across the boy’s face as if suddenly it all made sense. “Papa?”
“Aye, son.”
As the child went voluntarily into his arms, Brogan softly cried. Drew clutched the man tightly, afraid to let go.
Lorena slipped into a state of numbed shock. And really, what protest could she voice, watching Drew’s joy at being reunited with the papa he’d never forgotten, the man they’d thought long dead?
He had not perished in battle as they’d been led to believe, but had survived the war. Uncle Stephen had lied.
And now to be confronted with her family’s secret, to hear Brogan confess to being baby Benjamin’s father . . . it weighted her heart with heaviness knowing the circumstances, learning her captain had once been married to that Boston twice-widowed woman . . . no, not a widow for a second time, as Lorena now knew, but Mrs. Abigail Talvis. They’d never learned her married name. Papa had agreed to collect the babe and depart—no questions asked, no names given, no pleasantries exchanged.
Lorena swallowed a lump in her throat. That Brogan loved the child and had pursued the boy despite the great injustice done him was more than her mind could grasp.
For years now, she and her father had been sheltering Drew from his past so that he might have a new future, never suspecting that all along there’d been someone out there working just as diligently to restore Drew to his origins.
Lorena supposed she should feel outrage at Brogan for keeping his identity hidden, but knowing what she did of matters, this revelation shed an even brighter light on the goodness of his heart, and her love for him increased tenfold. His melancholy looks and fatherly concern now made perfect sense.
He was quite the unusual man, this Captain Brogan Talvis. Truly remarkable.
She lifted her gaze to his and saw all he’d suffered in his eyes. He was churning with questions for her, questions that, for the moment, would have to remain unanswered. They could not speak in front of Drew. But what about when Brogan got her alone?